Qualcomm

Qualcomm was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. It designs the Snapdragon processors used in a large share of Android phones.

Its second business is licensing: Qualcomm holds foundational patents in CDMA, LTE and 5G, and collects royalties on handsets that use them whether or not they carry its chips. That arrangement is the subject of long-running litigation and regulatory attention.

It has more recently pushed Snapdragon into Windows laptops, putting it in direct competition with Intel, AMD and Apple silicon.